ACLU chief wins new Law
School award

USA Patriot Act
'fundamentally changed the role of civil liberties in this
country,' Romero says

Anthony Romero, executive director of the American Civil
Liberties Union, told an audience of about 200 people Nov. 12 that
his group's efforts to reverse a number of the provisions of the
USA Patriot Act have reached a tipping point. "Increasingly, the
momentum is against making permanent these powers," he told an
enthusiastic crowd gathered for a dinner in his honor at the Schwab
Residential Center.

Romero, who graduated from Stanford Law School in 1990, was in
town to accept the inaugural Stanford Public Interest Lawyer of the
Year Award. The Law School and the Stanford Public Interest Law
Foundation selected him for his leadership at the ACLU following
the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, 2001.

During the past two years, Romero has led a campaign against
reauthorizing provisions in the Patriot Act that make it easier to
wiretap suspects, use intelligence information for criminal
prosecutions and investigate people for crimes without the past
standards of probable cause. "The act fundamentally changed the
role of civil liberties in this country," Romero said. "It has
provided a way for the government to seek information on
law-abiding citizens when there's no evidence they have done
anything wrong."

In
what Romero cited as perhaps the worst abuse so far, the government
has imprisoned at least two citizens suspected of being terrorists
without naming the charges against them or giving them the
opportunity to meet with a lawyer. "I once would have thought that
under no circumstances could that happen in this country," he said.
But Romero added that many are now beginning to question such
behavior. "You can hear the rumbling of the debate," he
said.